The New Year’s Prayer Challenge

By Robb Brunansky

Published January 1, 2025

Happy New Year! Today, many of us are evaluating our routines, hoping to make improvements for 2025. A new year is an ideal time to take inventory of our prayer lives – both individually and corporately – which is why I want to encourage you with some ways to grow in prayer in this new year.

Before Jesus went to the cross, He spent time praying in the garden of Gethsemane with His disciples. He asked Peter, James, and John to pray with Him at a distance. After an hour, He returned to find the disciples sleeping rather than praying, so He inquired, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?  Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt 26:40-41).

Jesus’ words inspire reflection about our understanding of prayer. He highlights three helpful truths to guide our times before the throne of grace.

First, an hour of prayer is not exceptional.

Second, a disciplined prayer life is the source of spiritual strength. These disciples must not have prayed very well, if at all, because they scattered when the guards arrived.

Finally, the obstacle to a vibrant prayer life is the flesh. The spirit mentioned in Matthew 26 is most likely the human spirit, regenerated by the Holy Spirit – desiring to do right, but battling fleshly desires. Tragically, and most frustratingly, our flesh would prefer to do almost anything but pray.

When we look at these foundational truths, we see three key elements to this encouragement toward greater prayer. An hour of prayer is a reasonable expectation. Prayer will provide increased spiritual power. And when we pray, we wage war against the flesh.

This encouragement therefore involves three elements:

• Pray for one hour in one or two sittings one day each week of the year.
• Pick the same day and time of the week as much as possible.
• Put this time on your calendar and make it a top priority.

I would also encourage you to pick a consistent prayer pattern for the other six days of the week, whether that is using some elements of the template below, using lists, or setting a fixed amount of time.

Because the flesh is weak, pick a prayer partner who has agreed to seek to grow in prayer this next year using this template. Pick someone who is the same gender and that you trust to encourage you and hold you accountable. Make sure you both ask each other on a regular basis how prayer is going and how you can pray for one another.

It also might be useful to employ a prayer journal to see how God works through your prayers in 2025.

Perhaps the question going through your minds is this: What am I going to pray about for an hour? This query arises because prayer often feels redundant. Thankfully, the Bible is full of prayer instructions, showing many ways to communicate with the Lord that fit countless situations. These ways allow us to be as systematic as a list of requests or as creative as a poem or a song.

Here’s a template to work through during your hour, and you can apply it to the other days and / or mix it up however you wish. These aspects have been developed from Dick Eastman’s book The Hour that Changes the World. I’ve modified some of the points due to theological deficiencies in some parts of the book. (Suggested time to spend in each aspect of prayer is listed in parentheses.)

The first aspect is praise (5 minutes)

Open your time by focusing on God’s attributes. He is holy, righteous, merciful, gracious, love, kind, patient, and so much more. Focus on who God is in Himself, not in relation to you personally (time for that will come later). Worship Him and praise His glory. We see many examples of this praise throughout Scripture, especially in Psalms (Psalm 135:5-7, 145:8-9, 150:1-2). This time helps focus your attention away from yourself and on God alone.

The second is waiting (2 minutes).

This area is often overlooked in prayer, yet the Bible contains numerous places where we are commanded to wait on the Lord, including several in the Psalms, where the psalmist pauses for divine intervention (Psalm 27:14, 40:1). Waiting should always characterize Christians’ general attitude before the Lord. We also should also ask for perseverance to wait for God’s intervention during and following our requests. During this time we also seek the Spirit’s guidance in our prayer time, that we might pray according to God’s will and not in the flesh.

The third aspect: confession (5 minutes).

Here, we might examine ourselves to ask God to show us if there is any wicked way in us (Ps 139:23-24). We should confess any sins we remember, sins we recognize not only in us but in God’s people corporately, and the sins of our nation, seeking God’s mercy. Parents can confess the sins of their children, following Job’s example of godly parenting. We can thank God for His forgiveness to us and to all who confess their sins to Him.

The fourth section of our hour is Scripture praying (8 minutes).

In this section, we open our Bibles and pray God’s Word back to Him. Use the Psalms for starters. Then move on to other areas, such as praying the Lord’s prayer, the fruit of the Spirit, the Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s prayers for the churches, and so on. To pray the Scriptures is nothing more than to respond to God’s Word in prayer. Pray for yourself and others as you pray through Scripture.

The fifth is intercession (15 minutes).

Here we pray for our families, friends, neighbors, the lost, our nation and its leaders, missions and church leaders, persecuted Christians, co-workers, and others who need prayer. This is where a prayer journal comes in handy, or a list of things people have asked you to remember in prayer.

At this point, ask God to put any needs He wants you to pray for on your heart. The Spirit often works by reminding believers of things that are suddenly in our minds even though these may not be on our list. So here we want to ask the Lord through His Spirit to guide us, bring needs to mind, burden our hearts with His will, and then pray as He directs.

The sixth category is petition (5 minutes).

This one is praying for your own godly desires and needs, and it needs no further elaboration.

Seventh: thanksgiving (5 minutes).

When we come to thanksgiving, we thank God for things He has done for us or those around us. We might praise God that He is sovereign, and then in thanksgiving we thank Him for sovereignly protecting us from some unforeseen danger. We might praise God for saving sinners, and then in thanksgiving we thank Him for our salvation. We might praise God for being gracious, and then we thank Him for giving grace to overcome temptation. A journal also can come in handy here, because we can thank God for His answers.

The eighth aspect of prayer is singing (5 minutes).

When we sing to the Lord, we are praying to Him. You can sing with recorded music, a hymnal or your memory, or an instrument. You can even make up your own songs. If you are not accustomed to singing, this will not only have the benefit of adding a wonderful element to prayer, it also will help you feel a little better about singing out in church.

The ninth phase is meditation (5 minutes).

The term meditation has been co-opted by New Age idolatry and Eastern mysticism, but those are really perversions of what is a biblical concept (Joshua 1:8, Psalm 1:2, Psalm 77:6, Psalm 77:12). Biblical meditation is not the emptying of your mind, but the filling of your mind with the Word and works of God. Spend five minutes pondering, considering, remembering, and rejoicing in God’s majesty and wonderful works (Ps 145:5). This mindset should become a way of thinking throughout the day, which is achieved by spending time meditating on these things in prayer. You also will begin to memorize Scripture more as you meditate on it.

The final section returns to praise (5 minutes).

We begin and end with praise – and how can we not? When we think upon God and His works, we are naturally led to this wonderful climax of praising Him!

That takes you to a full hour of engaging with God, communicating with Him and hearing Him speak in His Word.

Will you seek to grow in your prayer life this year in a significant way? Will you commit to being intentionally prayerful all year long? Will you pick a day and time to pray for one hour each week? Will you commit to praying consistently the other six days? Will you find a prayer partner to encourage you?

The goal of this encouragement is a step toward a lifetime of dedicated, committed, powerful, Spirit-filled prayer. And the ultimate goal is to be devoted to prayer for God’s glory. Happy New Year!